


meaner than my demons (bigger than these bones)

by celeste9



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, references canon conversion therapy and suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Nice won’t keep them from kicking you down, and it won’t get you back up again. Nice won’t fight back. Thomas has been fighting back his whole life. He can’t afford to be nice.Or, a history of Thomas Barrow at Downton Abbey.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & George Crawley, Thomas Barrow & Phyllis Baxter, Thomas Barrow & Sarah O'Brien, Thomas Barrow & Sybbie Branson, Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtenay, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 19
Kudos: 116





	meaner than my demons (bigger than these bones)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is (slightly altered) from Halsey. As a warning, this goes through Thomas' time on the series so it does include (though not in any graphic way) the deaths of people he cared about, his submission to gay conversion therapy, and his failed suicide attempt. That may make some readers uncomfortable so these parts should all be fairly skippable.

When he watches the Duke’s letters burn in the fireplace, Thomas thinks he has never been so stupid. This must be what he deserves, it must be what his own idiocy has wrought. To think that he had penned that letter and been so sure that not only would the Duke employ him, but that the Duke would _want_ him –

A swallow doesn’t make a summer, indeed. He had been foolish to believe any of the pretty words the Duke put to paper.

In his empty room, angry and smoking in his bed to calm his nerves, Thomas vows that he will never be so stupid again.

-

Of course, he is. At least with Pamuk, there is nothing on paper to incriminate Thomas the way he had intended to do with the Duke, and then Pamuk is dead anyway. By the look of it, Lady Mary will be the one who comes off badly, not Thomas, and that suits him fine.

Fine enough he decides to spread it around a little. One letter, that’s all. He can’t help where it goes from there.

-

He toys with Daisy mostly because it bothers William, and a little because it feels nice to be wanted, even if he doesn’t want back. He’s got to put on a show, doesn’t he? Wouldn’t do if it got out that he doesn’t actually like women. Daisy is silly and easy, and it’s just a bit of fun. He knows they all think he’s a nasty little rat, so he can’t pretend he doesn’t like the way Daisy looks at him. Not like many others have done, or will do. Maybe once he makes valet, once he’s more than just a stupid footman.

Valets are respected. Thomas likes the sound of that.

-

William’s playing the piano again and Mr. Carson’s too busy to have put a stop to it yet. Thomas doesn’t know what makes him do it, as O’Brien’s not got the face of a person who enjoys dancing, to say the least. Maybe he misses having a partner. He tells himself it’s for a laugh.

He bows over his outstretched hand. “May I have the honor, Miss O’Brien?”

“Oh, come off it, Thomas,” she says, scowling, but Thomas smiles at her a little, and it’s only them and William, the kitchen maids having scurried out at a shout from Mrs. Patmore.

She takes his hand gingerly, grumbling, and Thomas feels almost smug that her cheeks have flushed. Who knew she was a woman after all?

She’s a terrible dancer, can’t even be saved by Thomas’ skill, but she smiles by the end and Thomas almost enjoys himself.

-

A scheme’s not good for anything when nothing comes of it, and the most that comes from all his and O’Brien’s plans for Bates are mess and a bit of tarnish on his own reputation at Downton. Mr. Carson never liked him much but Thomas doesn’t think he’s being silly when he thinks Carson is just waiting for a reason to kick him out the door.

So when it comes to Bates and new schemes, he leaves the letter writing to O’Brien.

He’s got his own plans, now, doesn’t he? The war’s coming sooner or later, and Thomas would rather have it in his own hands where he is when it does. If Bates finally gets what’s coming to him in the meantime, all the better, but Thomas needs to look out for himself.

No one else will.

-

Thomas says he’ll work out the month when he hands in his notice, but he doesn’t. Once war with Germany is declared, no one thinks it right to keep him since he’s already got his papers. He heads to Richmond for his training. It’s all very polite. Mrs. Hughes wishes him well very sincerely; Mr. Carson shakes his hand. No one has a bad word for a volunteer, even if Thomas thinks Bates is thinking a lot of them.

A few months later, he’s in France.

-

O’Brien writes him first.

When they toss the letter at him, Thomas’ first thought is that it must be a mistake, because who would be writing to him? He’s not such an idiot to think he left Downton on good enough terms for any of that lot to give one fig about him enough to write, and he doubts even a war would make his sister change her tune. She probably doesn’t even know he’s enlisted; Thomas certainly hadn’t told her.

It’s not a mistake. He stares at the letter, recognizing O’Brien’s hand, and wonders for several long moments that she cared enough to make the effort. His hand shakes when he opens it; he lights a cigarette. He’s only got two more.

Thomas can hear the written words in O’Brien’s voice and it’s like they’re side-by-side just out the back door having a smoke, or standing below the stairwell chatting. She tells him all the goings on at Downton and Thomas feels a sudden, vicious stab of longing that he doesn’t quite understand.

Downton had never been his home, not really. It had been his decision to leave, even if he suspected they weren’t sorry to see the back of him. He doesn’t miss it.

But he reads the letter five times over and stuffs it inside his uniform jacket when he’s done.

-

Thomas feels silly writing back. The edges of the paper are smudged with dirt he couldn’t quite get off his hands; sometimes he thinks the mud might kill him before the Germans do. He wonders if he might not mind. At least it’d put an end to it.

He doesn’t know what to write. Should he say that Mr. Carson would be appalled by the state of his uniform? Should he say that this morning he pressed his hands to a man’s torso trying to hold his insides in, or that yesterday he heard a man’s final rattling breath? Should he say that he’s never been so scared in all his life and he doesn’t know what he was thinking, that this was the answer to his future?

He puts the paper aside and sits in the mud with his back against the dug out wall. He imagines himself having a smoke because he’s used up all his cigarettes. There’s a soldier there, Burroughs, Thomas thinks his name is, looking at a picture of his sweetheart, soppy as can be, and Thomas wonders what that might feel like. Last week he rutted in the darkness with a married stranger, breathing into each others’ mouths and pretending he didn’t notice when the man started crying, or that he moaned his wife’s name into Thomas’ neck.

He can’t tell that to O’Brien either.

-

There are few pleasures in the trenches, and the ones there are are embarrassingly small. Weak tea in a metal mug and O’Brien’s letters. Thomas clings to them like hooks into normalcy and knows he could never tell O’Brien how much her scathing commentary means to him, or how close he comes to tears whenever he receives one of her letters, a sign that someone remembers him, someone thinks of him.

They don’t seem half so bad now, now that Thomas is here, the upstairs and the downstairs. Thomas almost wishes for a pompous telling off from Mr. Carson, or for Lady Mary to look down her nose at him. He wishes for William to do something stupid as he chases after Daisy, if only so Thomas could have a laugh at him about it. He would rather wait at a hundred dinners or polish all the silver over and over than spend one more night in this miserable pit of Hell.

-

A man was blown apart in front of Thomas today. Yesterday they had eaten their rations together. Thomas had made a joke; the bloke had laughed.

Thomas keeps thinking that it could have been him. It could have been him that men were scraping bits of out of their uniforms.

A rat is snuffling by his feet as he writes to O’Brien. There’s almost no use in shooing them out; they always come back. Maybe one of the trench cats will catch its scent. Thomas never bothered much with the cats in the stables at Downton but he reaches fingers towards these, lets them sniff, scratches them behind their ears, offers them crumbs. They seem a rare bit of softness, even if they’re only here to catch the rats.

No cat here now, though, just the rat. Thomas kicks at it because they bite, the little devils, but it doesn’t go far. He almost admires it. Sort of reminds him of himself. Scraping its existence out of the mud, damned what anyone else says about it.

The letter sits half finished. He can’t pretend that he’s okay when he’s not, but he feels sick when he imagines letting anyone know that. O’Brien is friendly now, but who is to say she won’t find some reason and some way to use his words against him? Thomas knows better than anyone what she’s capable of when you get on her bad side. He wonders what it says about him that she’s the closest thing he has to a real friend.

He has the worst feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he’s going to die here, that no one will mourn him when he’s gone. The pen is shaking in his hand and his penmanship must look frightful. He is desperate and scared and tears prick at his eyes when he alludes to as much. He thinks about crumpling up the letter but seals it up before he can change his mind.

He regrets sending it as soon as it’s too late to take it back.

-

O’Brien finds the answer. Thomas should have known she would.

When he clutches his bleeding hand to his chest, he cries more for pathetic relief that _it’s over, it’s over, he can go home, surely he can_ than for the pain.

-

The letters come with him to the hospital where he recovers. O’Brien writes him there, too.

-

It feels different to walk down the gravel path to Downton Abbey again, and the uniform feels different now that he knows he won’t be sent back to the front. It was O’Brien again who got him placed at the hospital under Major Clarkson and he begins to wonder whether he ought to keep score of how many favors she’s done him. She might like to cash in on them one day.

It isn’t much different, though, to be inside Downton Abbey, in the servants’ hall again, no matter how different his uniform may be. He still isn’t particularly welcome and no one but O’Brien even seems the slightest bit glad to see him. He supposes he isn’t particularly nice either, but what reason does he have to be?

He would still rather be here than in a muddy trench with men screaming around him.

-

Lady Sybil – Nurse Crawley – is kind to him. Thomas never had much to do with her but found her generally the most inoffensive of her sisters; now he appreciates her friendly face and lack of judgment. She doesn’t look twice at his hand and remembers to call him Corporal Barrow more often than most seem to. He would certainly rather do as she tells him to than he would Mrs. Crawley. Mrs. Crawley always calls him Thomas, like he’s only the footman, and she bosses him around like that, too.

It isn’t like he hasn’t been bossed around the entirety of his career in the medical corps, but it’s the principle of it, see. He’s a soldier now, not a footman. He feels he’s owed some measure of respect.

He doesn’t know what it is about Lieutenant Courtenay that strikes him. Half his face is covered in bandages and he’s quiet and withdrawn, but Thomas likes having a moment to sit with him while he helps him swallow his pills and he always checks on Courtenay first, making sure he’s warm enough, that he’s eating.

Maybe it’s the soft way Courtenay thanks him, and the way he doesn’t know what Thomas is. An ill-tempered footman who got himself shot so he could escape back to a village where he’d never been wanted in the first place. To Courtenay, he is only Corporal Barrow, who sits and listens.

Thomas finds he likes being the person Courtenay thinks he is.

-

The older nurse, the stern one, is rushing about and it’s simple enough for Thomas to offer to change Lieutenant Courtenay’s bandages. She even thanks him for it.

Courtenay flusters and tries to refuse but Thomas remains firm. Courtenay’s face slowly emerges, bit by bit, pale skin and high cheekbones, and it’s a sort of thrill to know what he looks like. Thomas has the strongest desire to kiss his brow and squashes it immediately.

“Not a pretty sight, I’m afraid, Corporal,” Lieutenant Courtenay says, quite ridiculously.

“On the contrary, sir,” Thomas says. “I was just thinking you’re prettier than my sister.”

Courtenay snorts a laugh that turns into a cough; Thomas helps him have a sip of water. “Does she look like you? I doubt it, then. I’ve a feeling you look as nice as you sound.”

Thomas carefully ignores that. The last layer of bandages closest to his skin, the one over his ruined eyes, sticks a little. He brings the water basin in closer and bathes Courtenay’s skin; he wishes he didn’t like doing it quite so much. Courtenay stays quiet and still until Thomas places the new dressing over his eyes.

“Wish you didn’t have to do that,” he mutters.

“I don’t mind,” Thomas says. “Not at all.” It is entirely honest.

When Courtenay says, “Thank you,” it’s only a whisper, and Thomas contents himself with imagining another life where Lieutenant Courtenay might have whispered such a thing to Thomas’ ear, where Thomas might have been the kind man Courtenay sees him as.

Then he banishes the thought and finishes changing the dressing.

-

Thomas reads letters out loud for Lieutenant Courtenay and has never been so sorry for bearing bad news. He used to enjoy it a bit, in fact, as usually bad news for someone else meant something in it for him. He has the oddest urge to invent something, just so the words aren’t so harsh, even if it isn’t true. He can’t bear the look on Courtenay’s face. He is handsome even now, with his eyes ruined. Thomas wishes he could have known him before, even though he knows that’s silly. Before Thomas would have been nothing to him. Just a servant.

There is a moment where Thomas thinks… Well, perhaps it’s a moment where he doesn’t think. He yearns. He yearns to give Courtenay an answer about why he is different and have that answer reflected back to him, to be understood because they are the same. He _yearns._

He expects that’s why it goes so very wrong, in the end.

-

He pushes Edward Courtenay out of his mind because once it’s done it’s done, and there’s nothing that can be done now. Turning Downton into a convalescent home for recovering officers is nice and all, but it’s too little, too late to help Courtenay.

Edward Courtenay deserved so much more.

Still, the sense of satisfaction he feels at walking through Downton’s front door is worth an awful lot, and so is the look on Mr. Carson’s face every time Thomas gets to shove it to him that he’s not in charge of him anymore.

He doesn’t let himself get so close to another soldier again.

-

Thomas smokes in the courtyard, knowing that the servants will be bustling downstairs, preparing for dinner. It’s almost time for the dressing bell. He turns his head slightly at the sound of footsteps, but it’s only Nurse Crawley.

“You must be glad to be done with all our fuss,” she says.

Thomas blows out a puff of smoke. “What makes you say that?” he still has to suppress the urge to add, ‘milady’.

“You just seem happier, that’s all. Nicer,” she adds.

Clearly she doesn’t go downstairs. “Suppose I like having a purpose.”

She smiles. “I understand.” She gazes over the grounds and somehow seems more real like this, in a plain dress with her tied back and covered, than she ever did sitting at the table at dinner in her finery, being served. Thomas admires her, and he doesn’t think he could say that about anyone else in the family.

Her eyes are soft when she looks towards him again. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do this for Lieutenant Courtenay.”

Thomas drops the butt of his cigarette so that he can snuff it out beneath his toe. He thinks about holding Courtenay’s hand. He thinks about showing him the gardens. “Me, too.”

-

Thomas nicks a bottle of wine though he thinks it doesn’t really count as stealing anymore, seeing as he’s Sergeant Barrow now. He’s merely appropriating it for the war effort. Besides, he doubts even Carson will be prepared to cry about a missing bottle of wine in a time like this. Perhaps he’ll assume it went to the soldiers.

Thomas is a soldier, right? So there’s no problem.

He shares it with O’Brien, and he thinks they’re both a little drunk. He thinks that’s the only reason it comes out.

“Her ladyship,” O’Brien says. “She’s suffered so much, you see? And it was me. I did it.”

“There now, Miss O’Brien,” Thomas says, a bit jokingly. “I know we’re acquired tastes, you and me, but you mustn’t be so hard on yourself as that. You aren’t that bad.”

“I moved the soap,” she says, and Thomas is horribly afraid she’s starting to cry.

“You… moved the soap?”

“I moved the soap and she slipped and she lost the baby.”

Thomas stares. O’Brien sniffles into the wine.

A lot of things seem clearer now, and nothing more so than O’Brien’s sudden turn to utterly devoted overprotectiveness where it comes to Lady Grantham. Thomas feels a bit ill; he wishes they were both less drunk. He doesn’t think he wants this secret.

“It’s all right,” he says, though it isn’t, just so she won’t fall apart worse. His hand hovers near her shoulder but he doesn’t touch.

“It isn’t,” she says, and then she fixes him with a wide-eyed stare. “Thomas, you can’t say anything, not to nobody. I’ll be ruined.”

Thomas thinks of her letters, the ones he treasured in the trenches; he still has them. He thinks of the work she’s done to get him here. “Who d’you think I am?” he says.

She nods at him, short and sharp, and they finish the wine in silence.

Thomas wishes he didn’t know.

-

He’s sorry about William. He isn’t sure anyone would believe it if he said so, but he is. He mightn’t have thought he would be, but he knows what it was like on the front.

He is sorry.

-

In France, it seemed as though the war would never end, but they can all feel the end coming now. Thomas supposes he has a place at Downton for at least a while after it’s over, until all the officers move on. After that?

His letters now are letters of inquiry, and that feels more normal. He stops thinking that perhaps one day there will be something in the post from his sister, because if she hasn’t written yet, there is no reason she will now. She can’t have anything to say Thomas will want to hear, in any case.

No, now he must focus again on his future. The world is changing, and Thomas will change with it.

He can’t be a footman again.

-

He supposes what bothers him the most after the war, when all the injured officers have gone from Downton, is that the staff pretend to care what will happen to him. None but O’Brien could be bothered to even check if he was still alive while he was on the front and none but her was glad to see him when he came back. Daisy can pretend all she likes but she doesn’t give one whit, and neither do the rest. They’ll be glad to see his back, just like before, and they won’t think on him a moment once he’s gone.

Lucky he won’t think on them, neither.

-

His mistake this time was in thinking he could ever make something of himself beyond being a servant. He would laugh at the idea he’d actually thought he could be in business for himself if he didn’t think he’d just start blubbing instead. It seems that no matter how stupid he is, he can always find a way to top it.

O’Brien’s pity makes him hate her a bit, and yet he can’t send her away. Maybe pity is better than no one caring at all.

-

His pride suffers when he finds he must stoop and bow and scrape again, only to try to end up back where he started from. Thomas supposes people like him can’t be bothered with things like pride, though it doesn’t stop him feeling worse about it. All he knows is he’ll fight to keep his head up.

The Spanish flu saves him. It may be selfish and heartless to say so but that doesn’t stop it being true. Thomas isn’t so foolish to think Mr. Carson didn’t see straight through his sudden bout of helpfulness, but he also knows there’s no way for Carson to push him out now without casting himself in the role of the ungrateful villain who can’t let go of his grudge.

He can’t say he’s sorry, either, to see Bates go. He almost wishes he had someone to write to about it who would actually share his pleasure.

-

He almost wishes, too, that he had a right to write Lady Sybil when she goes to Ireland with the chauffeur. Thomas can’t say that he approves her choice, and in fact thinks it may be the first thing he’s ever agreed with Carson on, but the fact still stands that no one in the family was ever kinder to him than Lady Sybil. He misses her when she’s gone.

Sometimes as he goes through the house he imagines it as it was, beds in the drawing room, table tennis in the library, small dining tables in the great hall. It had seemed simpler then, more like he was on even footing. It hadn’t been strange for Nurse Crawley, as she had been then, to sit with him while they ate sandwiches for lunch and ask him how he was. The most marvelous thing, he had always thought, was that she’d cared about the answer.

So he does miss her. When Anna mentions small things to the other servants that Lady Mary has shared from her letters, Thomas pretends not to listen overmuch and to care even less but he does.

He hopes she’s happy, married to the chauffeur or not.

-

The business with the dog brings him so close to being sacked, after all the effort it took getting back in their good graces, that he’s sick with it. He’s sorry, too, that he brought the dog into it. She may be only a dumb beast but he certainly hadn’t wanted any trouble to come to her. He wonders how many times he will come to the brink of disaster because he listens to O’Brien’s scheming ideas and thinks, yes, that might work, before he will learn his lesson.

Though he does admit to himself that when O’Brien had suggested he recover something important to his lordship, she probably hadn’t meant the dog. That was all Thomas, and if there’s one thing he knows about himself, it’s that he has no trouble finding ways to be stupid.

Still, it bumps him up a bit in Lord Grantham’s eyes, and he thinks that’s what gets him a shot at being valet now that Bates is gone, so maybe it was worth it in the end.

-

It’s funny, perhaps. Thomas thinks he might have taken O’Brien for granted, assumed that because she had long been the only one downstairs he felt a modicum of affection for that it would always be that way, that she would always be the nearest he had to a friend.

Then there are a couple of quick letters between O’Brien and her sister and Alfred arrives, and it all goes a bit wrong. Alfred is a twit and O’Brien seems to think Thomas should give him a helping hand, give him a push, so he can go straight to the top. Straight past Thomas, in fact, seems her goal. Well, Thomas will be damned before he lets that happen.

He never had a push nor a helping hand. If he were more generous he might understand why O’Brien wants more for her family and why she puts Alfred above him, but Thomas isn’t generous and he’s never had anyone put him first. Not his family, not nobody.

He should never have let himself think he could count on O’Brien.

-

The wonderful thing about rumors is that sometimes you don’t even need to write a letter to start them. Sometimes all it takes is the quick suggestion to the right person that Lady Grantham might be in need of a new lady’s maid soon, that Miss O’Brien might be looking elsewhere. Even though it fizzles out, it did its job.

He doesn’t understand at the time that it may as well have been a declaration of war.

-

When Lady Sybil passes, Thomas writes a letter, unaddressed. He writes of how kind she was to him, and how she believed the best of him even when he’d never given anyone much reason to. He writes of their lunches together during the war, and of long hours spent working at her side. He writes of the care she’d shown to the soldiers, and how it was in no small part thanks to her that Downton had been converted to a convalescent home so they could keep what happened to Lieutenant Courtenay from happening to anyone else, at least the best they could. His face is wet when he writes it but he doesn’t stop.

He leaves it unaddressed because he has no one to send it to. No family, no real friends. His acquaintances in service will only see it as gossip, the tragedy striking the Crawley family, the death of the earl’s youngest daughter, the one who ran away with the chauffeur. It will be talk in the servants’ halls, talk at the dinners they serve at, talk everywhere.

And that isn’t what Thomas wants. He can’t stop it, but he won’t add to it, neither. He wants to write of Lady Sybil because he was fond of her, but no one will understand that. So writes the letter, and then he tosses it into the fire, watching the pages curl up as he smokes.

The ache in his belly he attributes to Mrs. Patmore’s dinner, and maybe to the softness he had allowed himself to feel for someone he’d had no right caring for.

-

The first time he holds the baby, Miss Sybbie, Thomas is terrified of breaking her, but she burbles at him and wraps her tiny, tiny hand around his finger and he smiles at her, charmed and besotted like a fool. She has her mother’s pretty eyes and Thomas misses Lady Sybil something fierce.

“Aren’t you lovely,” he says to the baby, and knows he would do anything for her.

-

The maids make fools of themselves around Jimmy, giggling and tittering when he passes, bumping into corners and dropping things when he smiles at them. Absolutely silly little nits, they are, but strangely enough, Thomas doesn’t really blame them. Jimmy is the best thing that’s happened to Downton in ages. Thomas finds himself wanting to be helpful instead of putting his defenses up.

And Jimmy might actually like Thomas, and isn’t that something? So Thomas lays a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder when he doesn’t need to, and he pats Jimmy’s knee under the table when he says something kind. He hardly remembers what it’s like to have someone be kind.

It isn’t so much that Thomas thinks Jimmy will want something more; it’s that Thomas thinks Jimmy might be his friend. And if Jimmy does want a little more, someday, well, Thomas won’t say no.

-

His mistake in the end, he thinks, with Jimmy, is that he allowed himself to hope, to believe, when he wasn’t sure. When you’re like Thomas is, you’ve got to be sure.

He wasn’t sure, and he’d tried anyway, and he should have learned his lesson with Pamuk. He should have known better. He should have –

He was lonely and infatuated and he wanted so very badly. He listened to talk, and let himself think it was true.

He was so very, very stupid.

-

It’s not a secret he’s going, though Thomas doesn’t know how many know the truth of it. He suspects few, and that’s fine with him. He’d prefer to keep the extent of his disgrace as secret as possible, and he doesn’t wish for anyone else to think him foul.

As he smokes outside, he can’t say that he’s pleased when Anna makes her way over to him. He supposes she’s quite happy with the situation, given it shoves him over to make room for Bates again.

She isn’t unkind, though, when she stands beside him and says, “You might’ve had an easier time of it if you’d made friends here, and not just a partner in crime, you know.”

The thought of O’Brien stings. All her nudges and her talk of Alfred’s words about Jimmy ring very false now. “I’m not much in the business of making friends.”

“That’s very clear.”

He lowers his hand, the cigarette still between his fingers, so she won’t see how it shakes. “Can’t see what difference it would’ve made in any case.”

“Oh, I can. You see, folks are much more likely to stick their necks out for someone they like.” Anna steps back, her gaze halfway between sad and pitying. “You might’ve enjoyed it better here, too.”

Thomas listens to the sound of her fading footsteps on the gravel and can’t imagine anyone wanting to offer him a helping hand, no matter how nice he’d been. He’d been nice to Jimmy and look how that turned out.

No one has given him a helping hand in all his life so he can’t see why he should have hoped for one now.

-

It isn’t Jimmy Thomas blames. Jimmy wouldn’t have done it on his own. Thomas believes that in the deepest part of him.

It isn’t Jimmy.

It isn’t even Alfred, really, who is too stupid to do anything on his own. He may be small enough to have told Mister Carson but that’s about the extent of it, Thomas is sure. It makes sense when Bates tells him about O’Brien. He thinks he already knew.

What makes Thomas hate her is that she made him a victim and he can’t think of how to fight his way out of it.

-

He doesn’t understand why Bates helps him. He must know that Thomas wouldn’t have, had their positions been reversed.

It puts Thomas in his debt, and he can’t see how any good will come of it. It’s over, and he should be grateful he won’t go to prison. Even so, he can’t say no when Bates presses the matter.

And even after everything, Thomas can’t give away O’Brien’s vile secret, not in any true way. He supposes he… Well, he doesn’t have much ground to stand on, and he understands shame. He has never seen O’Brien truly shamed but for the moment she told him what she’d done. She will live with that shame and that guilt forever.

Thomas tells Bates to mention the soap. That will have to be enough.

In the meantime, he supposes he’ll need to write a letter to that cousin.

-

“Lord Grantham,” Mr. Carson says in the pantry, “has suggested we might keep you on.”

Thomas stares. “Sorry?”

“That is, if you agree, of course. He seemed to think you would like to stay though I’m not sure I share his certainty. However, should you wish, I will appoint you as under-butler.” He waits.

Thomas’ head is spinning. He can’t think what to say. Lord Grantham wanted to keep him? And Carson has agreed? He’s gone from leaving with no reference to staying as the under-butler?

Was Bates really as successful as all that? He finds himself remembering what Anna had said, about people sticking their necks out for people they like. Bates had done this without even liking Thomas.

Maybe Anna had a point.

“The under-butler?” Thomas finally manages to say.

Mr. Carson eyes him, lips thin. “That is what I said. Will you stay or go?”

Thomas blinks. “Why, I should think I’ll stay, Mister Carson. That is, if you’re offering.”

“I believe I said so, Mister Barrow.” He looks down at his desk, a clear indication that the conversation is over.

“Thank you, Mister Carson,” Thomas says, remembering his manners, and turns to leave. He can’t quite seem to put it all together. Under-butler. Under-butler at Downton Abbey.

“One more thing, Mister Barrow,” Carson says, and Thomas stops. “Lord Grantham hopes very much you will add your name to the house cricket team.”

Thomas smiles. “Be happy to, Mister Carson.”

Seems he won’t be needing to write that letter after all.

-

What he truly regrets about the whole disaster is that he thinks Jimmy could actually have been his friend, a friend like Anna had said he should have made. Thomas’ actions ruined that chance.

Jimmy can hardly stand to look at him. He refuses to be alone with him. Thomas doesn’t push.

-

In the months following his appointment to under-butler, Thomas finds he thinks on Anna’s words from time to time. He and O’Brien have reached an uneasy stalemate but they no longer talk. At least, not if you don’t count sniping at each other. No one talks to him much, really. Daisy and Ivy a bit, but they never know much worth knowing so it isn’t the same.

Thomas prides himself on being observant and he keeps his eyes and ears open, but he can’t be everywhere. Without the benefit of dressing any member of the family, or without the friendship of someone who does, there is a lot he misses.

He doubts Anna would think much of his motivations but he does need someone. Thomas has come so close to ruin so many times; he can’t afford to be caught out by anything.

If only O’Brien would leave. Perhaps he might have better luck with a new lady’s maid.

-

At the fair in Thirsk, Thomas keeps his distance from Jimmy. He can tell when he isn’t wanted and the look on Jimmy’s face when Thomas had suggested they go had been enough to convey his feelings.

So Thomas steps back and lets Jimmy have his fun. Thomas speaks with the girls, who have never looked at him any different. He’s not sure they even know. He walks next to Branson and says he hadn’t thought he’d ever see the day a member of the family not only came out to spend the evening with the servants, but drove them there in the first place. He isn’t trying to be spiteful, not really, though not so long ago he surely would have been.

He doesn’t miss the way Branson shoots a look at that new maid before he shrugs and says the house is terribly empty and that he’s glad of the company. Thomas smiles a little and wonders what Edna’s been up to.

It hurts a little when Jimmy makes it clear he expects that Thomas must be… must be effeminate, or weak, or something, because of what he is. It’s always what people think, of course, but it hurts because it’s Jimmy. When they win the tug of war, and Thomas laughs on his bottom in the dirt, he catches Jimmy’s eyes for only a second before he looks away. He doesn’t look at how handsome Jimmy is in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves. He hugs Branson and shakes Alfred’s hand and he doesn’t touch Jimmy at all.

He watches him, though. He watches him wave his money around and he watches him buy drinks, partaking a bit too much himself. Thomas watches as Jimmy gets a little louder, a little unsteadier, and keeps flourishing that handful of notes.

He follows because he’s worried. He takes the beating so Jimmy doesn’t have to.

It’s worth it.

Then Jimmy reads him the newspaper and says they can be friends and it’s so very, very worth it.

-

It’s Jimmy who rushes in to tell him about Mister Matthew. An accident, coming back from seeing their new little baby in the village hospital. George. Just born and he’s got no father.

It isn’t like Lady Sybil, but Thomas has to put down the magazine before it falls from his trembling fingers and he can’t stop thinking about Mister Matthew in his uniform in the trenches, covered in mud, how unexpectedly welcome his familiar face had been.

An awful business. Awful.

It’s weeks before Thomas holds Master George for the first time, and his ribs are still sore. The baby fusses a little and Thomas buries his wince. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs to the baby, “you’ve got lots of people who love you. Even me. You can count on me.”

Master George spits up on his shoulder and Thomas doesn’t even care.

-

It’s quite a scandal when O’Brien runs out before breakfast, leaving nothing but a note. Thomas has never had such a lovely morning.

-

To be perfectly honest, Thomas’ quarrel with Nanny West is largely because she doesn’t respect him, and because she thinks she can order him around like she’s part of the family. Certainly he doesn’t like that she discourages him seeing the children, as he is quite fond of them, but he wouldn’t object nearly so much if she wasn’t so high and mighty about it.

When it turns out he was right after all, that she wasn’t treating the children well, he can’t help but feel vindicated. Lady Grantham’s sincere gratitude doesn’t hurt either.

The new nanny is quite happy to watch him set Miss Sybbie on his knee and whisper with her until she laughs aloud, and she doesn’t ask him to pass messages along. Instead she smiles indulgently and says it’s lovely to see a man so good with children, so Thomas thinks it perfectly right that she should stay on.

Miss Braithwaite, on the other hand, really should go. She can’t be controlled and in fact seems to think she can do the controlling. Thomas shows her favor because he generally finds it’s best to have the ear of the lady’s maid, who in turn has the ear of Lady Grantham, but he doesn’t like servants who don’t know their place. It’s become very clear what she’s up to with Branson and Thomas doesn’t like it one bit. He’s just about got used to Branson, who has the benefit of Lady Sybil’s good opinion and who mostly refrains from putting on airs.

He’ll be damned, though, if he has to get used to another one, especially when she’s so nasty as Braithwaite.

-

When his sister finally writes, it’s to tell him about Phyllis Baxter, to ask a favor. She acts as though nothing happened, as though she hasn’t pretended she hasn’t got a brother for the last ten years. She tells him he has a nephew and that’s the first he’s ever heard of it. Suppose it wouldn’t do to have someone like him around the boy.

She acts like they’re still family. Thomas wants to refuse her out of spite.

But he remembers Phyllis Baxter, and he remembers she’d been kind.

He does the favor for her. Not for his sister.

And he does it, too, for himself. He needs to know what’s going on and he needs someone who’s on his side. Having Baxter around will solve quite a few problems all at once, and Thomas is certain they’ll like her downstairs a fair bit better than they like him.

Yes, he’s sure this will work out well for him.

-

It does, at first. Everyone likes Miss Baxter, so kind, so helpful. They begin to open up to her, and Miss Baxter opens up to Thomas.

But he can see as she begins to chafe, and it becomes more work than he’d anticipated rather quickly.

-

“I’m sure you’re aware that his lordship is departing for America,” Mr. Carson says.

“I am,” Thomas says, though he can’t make out what the point of this conversation is.

“He will be in need of a valet to accompany him, as Mister Bates will not be going. I’m sure you have no objections.” The words are said with a certainty of tone that suggests disagreement will be met harshly.

Thomas gapes a moment. “What, me?”

“As I said.”

America? With Lord Grantham? Thomas can’t fathom why he has found himself in this situation but he is most assuredly not going to argue. “I’ll just pack my bag, then, Mister Carson.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Carson says, still in that even tone that suggests he knew there would be no doubt.

“May I ask, Mister Carson,” Thomas starts before he goes, but Carson interrupts.

“No, you may not.”

“Right,” Thomas says, and makes his exit.

-

In America Thomas feels a strange sense of freedom. He is a stranger here, and strange, and there is liberty in that.

And America, in many, many ways, is not England.

It’s less difficult than he might have thought to find what he was looking for. It seems the culture spread by the American ban on liquor has led to more than just what’s termed the speakeasy, but to places where –

Well, Thomas will just say that it took a moment to recover from the shock when he realized that not only were those ladies on stage not actually ladies, but that many in the audience were married couples, men and women in tails and dresses who wouldn’t have looked out of place at Downton.

Somehow, however, Thomas can’t imagine anyone from Downton looking like they fit in here.

He almost feels as though even he doesn’t fit in. He doesn’t deny the pleasure he gets out of watching the performances, but he also can’t deny the warm feeling at the back of his neck or the way he keeps checking to make sure the police haven’t come to arrest him, or even the fact that he doesn’t quite understand the urge to dress up like this.

But he likes watching them, and they clearly revel in the attention and the applause. He wonders what it must be like to be so open.

In the audience, too, he sees men holding hands, he sees women leaning in so close as to be intimate, and no one bats an eye. It’s as though he’s entered a fairy realm where the normal rules of society don’t apply. It’s… confounding, like a dream he can’t grasp, like the edges of a dream he won’t quite recall in the morning.

Thomas dances with a man and gets taken home by him, and he’s almost sorry when he boards the ship back to England with Lord Grantham.

-

Even more annoying than the fact that Miss Baxter begins to choose not to tell Thomas what she knows is the idea that she seems to prefer Molesley over him.

Molesley, really.

-

When he’s in his room alone at night, sometimes Thomas is able to admit to himself that he’s been too harsh with Miss Baxter, and it’s no wonder she’s started to push back. She is one of the few people in this world that was ever kind to him and he has used her terrible secret to control her.

He’s used her kindness, too. He knew they would like her. He knew they would like her far more than they ever liked him.

Thomas resents her a bit for that. It’s all well and good to say that if he were nicer he wouldn’t need to be hard like this, but when you go through life the way Thomas has it’s difficult to just be nice. Nice won’t keep them from kicking you down, and it won’t get you back up again. Nice won’t fight back.

Thomas has been fighting back his whole life. He can’t afford to be nice. If Miss Baxter understood that, then he wouldn’t need to be so rough with her.

-

As seems to happen with most of Thomas’ plans, this one goes awry as well. It rather spectacularly explodes in his face, in fact, and once again he finds himself on thin ice with the family.

Once again, he is saved by tragedy. Or in this case, tragedy averted. Thomas doesn’t think when he smells the smoke, when he opens the door to see Lady Edith’s bedroom on fire. He reacts.

He doesn’t expect Lady Grantham’s fervent gratitude, but he is glad for it. She calls him brave and Thomas wonders, _was that what it was?_ Had it been more than anyone else would have done? He hadn’t thought so. He has no great fondness for Lady Edith but he can’t imagine having left her there to die in her bed when he saw a chance to get her out. He has certainly never before had cause to think himself particularly brave.

But he will accept it nonetheless, and keep his job.

-

When Jimmy leaves, Thomas loses his only true friend at Downton. Miss Baxter can no longer be counted for obvious reasons.

He almost loses his fragile grasp on his self-control when Jimmy wishes for his happiness. It’s not even all to do with Jimmy; half of it is that he can’t imagine a future where he is actually happy. The most he hopes for is a sort of contentment.

He wants desperately to lean in for a hug and knows he can’t, so he settles for clasping Jimmy’s hand. It hurts, watching him disappear down the road. Thomas will write, but he doesn’t expect much from Jimmy. It wouldn’t be the same anyway.

He tells Anna he wants to belong. The problem is that he can’t see how it’s possible.

-

“Piggyback, Mister Barrow!” declares a small voice, the ‘Mister’ and the ‘Barrow’ a tiny bit slurred, and Thomas has to steel his face to stop from smiling too much.

He turns around in the hall to find Nanny apologizing and saying they mustn’t interrupt Mister Barrow’s important work, Master George, but Thomas looks down at George’s unabashedly eager face and finds he doesn’t care to decline him anything. “Oh, just a quick one, then,” he says, and drops down for George to clamber up.

Nanny laughs as they clop down the hall and Thomas thinks it’s such a small pleasure to hear Master George’s happy, excited voice and know it’s because of him, but his pleasures are few enough so he treasures it. Sometimes Thomas looks at Master George and he looks so like Mister Matthew, Mister Matthew who sat once with Thomas in the trenches as they shared tea in metal mugs together. It makes him feel a bit wistful.

They come across Branson and Miss Sybbie at the other end of the hall and Thomas straightens slightly in a small attempt to look somewhat dignified, though the smirk on Branson’s face tells him he failed. “Mister Branson,” he says and then gives a small smile to Sybbie. “Miss Sybbie.”

“Will you join our tea party, Mister Barrow?” she asks him eagerly.

Branson says, “Mister Barrow is busy, Sybbie, he’s working.”

Miss Sybbie takes this in with a suspicious eye at Master George’s piggyback ride.

Thomas shifts Master George off his back onto his hip. He feels a sudden fierce stab of jealousy for this thing he can’t have that Branson doesn’t even think about, the opportunity to sit on the floor with a bunch of dolls and a child that’s his, playing. He can spoil the boy on his hip but that won’t make Master George his, and there will never be a boy on his hip that is.

“Tell you what,” he says, his tone light, “invite me to the next one.”

Miss Sybbie beams at him, and affection mixes with longing in his heart.

-

Choose Your Own Path feels like the answer to everything.

-

Thomas has a shared room for his therapy; they don’t talk much. Thomas knows his roommate isn’t there by choice and he’s pretty sure he’s used a fake name. The man can’t quite cover his surprise that Thomas is there by his own power.

He shouts in the night sometimes but it makes him angry when Thomas shakes him gently and tries to soothe him, so Thomas stops bothering. He doesn’t offer to help when he sees him come back to the room shaking from his sessions, or when he can’t fasten his buttons.

The whole ordeal is best not thought about at all, Thomas decides, and doesn’t look back once he’s through the door.

-

It hurts a little more every time Thomas injects himself but he thinks, _it must work soon, this time I will feel different, once more and I will be normal._

Only the pain gets worse and the abscess grows and Thomas still feels the same. He can’t give in, not after all this, not after all it has cost, not when nothing has changed. It must work. He must be normal. He must belong.

-

He writes the letter to the police out of bitterness. Miss Baxter, so chummy with everyone but him, so beloved even after her secret got out. She wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him and she can’t deign to so much as keep him in the know.

Thomas feels ill all the time. Sometimes he thinks he might actually fall down and wonders if it isn’t his own spite that keeps him going.

So he writes the letter. Miss Baxter won’t tell him what she knows but she’ll have to tell the police, won’t she?

After he sends it he thinks maybe he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been… He thinks maybe he shouldn’t have –

But it’s already sent so that’s that.

-

Thomas knows it isn’t working. He thinks there’s something seriously wrong with him.

It might hurt even worse to ask for help.

Miss Baxter already saw him, and she said she would help. He remembers she was kind to him. He can’t go to anyone else.

She would’ve been well within her rights to tell him to shove off but she doesn’t. Not even when he tells her about the letter. She knew it was him already, and she still helps him. She calls him brave.

Thomas doesn’t understand it.

-

It feels nice to have a friend again.

-

Thomas can’t decide whether Stowell or Lord Sinderby is more infuriating. He finds himself rather surprised at how irritated he is to hear Stowell speak disparagingly of Branson and to see how rudely he treats him at dinner, but then, Thomas supposes, Branson has grown on him, and it’s one thing for Thomas to say something snide about the chauffeur and quite another for this snobbish butler from another house to do so.

As for Lord Sinderby, well. Thomas has never been so glad to be employed by Lord Grantham before. His lordship would hang himself before calling a servant a stupid fool at dinner, even if they had deserved it, and Thomas most certainly had not.

He’s quite happy to oblige Lady Mary’s desire to put Stowell down a peg, but when he takes it farther, when he hopes to damage them both, butler and lord, that is entirely for Thomas’ own pride.

He does love a good secret.

-

“Mister Barrow,” says Branson, and Thomas turns as politely as he can.

Tension slides out of his spine when he sees Miss Sybbie holding Branson’s hand. “She wanted to make sure she said goodbye to you,” Branson explains.

Thomas feels warmth spread through him and he kneels down; Miss Sybbie skips over to him. “I’m very glad,” he says. “I would’ve missed you if you’d run off into the night without a word.”

Miss Sybbie giggles. “Our boat’s in the morning.”

“All right, if you’d run off in the morning, then.”

“Will you miss me anyway, Mister Barrow?”

Thomas makes himself smile though he feels a horrible sadness coming over him, and he feels a thickness in his throat. He wishes Branson wasn’t watching. “Very much, Miss Sybbie. I’ll miss you very much.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” she says, and puts her little arms around him. Thomas hugs her, cherishing the soft sweetness of her hair against his cheek for just a moment.

Reluctantly, he gently disentangles her. “Go on, then. You’ve got to have a good sleep so you’ll be ready to take over America.”

“Goodbye, Mister Barrow,” she says, and takes her father’s hand again.

“Goodbye, Miss Sybbie,” Thomas says. He finds it strangely difficult to straighten back up to his feet.

Branson has an odd expression on his face but he only says, “Thank you for being kind to her,” and Thomas inclines his head, watching them walk away.

He will miss her so terribly much.

-

There is nothing quite like having been at a house for more than a decade and discovering that you are still considered a bit useless, or at least, superfluous. Thomas doesn’t doubt that Miss Denker’s friendly news about the possibility of staff being laid off was meant to stir trouble, but it doesn’t much matter when the end result is that Thomas isn’t wanted. All his years of service and for what?

For pity’s sake, he can’t even try to help Andy without being rebuffed. It is impossible to comprehend, apparently, that all Thomas wants is to be friends and to be helpful, and instead Andy keeps him at length as though he were a nasty insect, or perhaps as though he’s got a disease that’s catching.

Funny how everyone always thinks they can be infected by what Thomas is.

Discouraging doesn’t exactly cover it when he smokes in his room and thinks about how clear it is that not only will no one miss him, but no one will be at all sorry he’s going. Mr. Carson won’t even try to pretend Thomas is needed at all. It almost makes him want to give up the effort of finding somewhere else and make them have to tell him to his face he’s let go, except that…

It’s got to be him leaving. Even if he knows why, he can’t let them actually push him out the door. He needs to walk out himself. He supposes no one would understand but to Thomas, the distinction is everything.

Miss Baxter says, “Perhaps you should tell Mister Carson that you want to stay.”

“And that will do what, exactly?”

“Show him that you care. You try so very hard to show that you don’t and then you’re surprised when people believe you.”

Thomas turns the page of the newspaper to pretend he isn’t very interested in the conversation. “What makes you think I do care?”

She gives him a look that indicates very well how daft she thinks he is. “Downton has been more than a job for you for fifteen years, Mister Barrow. It’s been your home. It isn’t wrong for you to feel that.”

“It isn’t my home,” Thomas says, pushing his chair back to stand up. “Not for much longer, anyway.”

Can’t be his home when no one wants him here.

-

All Thomas writes now are letters asking about job postings, letters seeking interviews, letters arranging times. All he gets back are polite answers, and then polite rejections. He isn’t wanted at Downton and it seems he isn’t wanted anywhere else neither. He wonders if it’s supposed to make him feel better about it when they tell him he’s over-qualified.

Over-qualified. He thinks he might hate that word more than any other.

-

It’s really something, Thomas thinks, to be told to his face that Carson is a kind man when he’s certainly never been kind to Thomas. He remembers Carson calling him foul, sharp as the moment it happened, and how small it made it him feel. Rather as he’s felt often in recent days.

Funny that Miss Baxter thinks he doesn’t mind what people say, though Thomas supposes he’s tried hard to make it seem that way. He doesn’t know what to make of the fact he succeeded so well.

Gwen’s visit only served to remind him that after all these years, Thomas is still nothing, and he still has nothing. No place, no purpose, and the only one who gives half a damn about him is Miss Baxter. And perhaps the children, whose smiles brighten his day, but who will no doubt forget him soon enough. It’s depressing, is what it is. He wishes… he wishes…

But there’s no point to wishing. No point to wishing maybe he hadn’t guarded himself quite so fiercely, that maybe he hadn’t always had his fists up, that maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe isn’t good for anything.

Then he realizes Andy can’t read, and it’s like the opening of a door. Something he can do, something he can help, a place where he fits and has purpose. He’s needed. Thomas latches onto the opportunity and holds tight.

-

The reading is slow going and Andy loses patience quicker than Thomas does. He wants a quicker fix than is possible and he gets frustrated at his struggles. He pushes the book away from him and runs his hand through his hair, breathing out.

“Why’re you helping me?” he asks. “I wasn’t kind to you.”

“I can hardly throw stones, can I?” Thomas says.

Andy watches him, not taking the bait. “You said others had been worse to you than me.”

“I did.”

“Because… because you’re…”

“Because I’m not like you?” Thomas says, rescuing him.

Andy blushes. “Right.”

He wishes he had a cigarette on him. “People don’t like what’s different.”

“I’m sorry,” Andy says, very sincerely, but with his gaze aimed at his own knees. “I thought… I suppose I thought…”

“I know what you thought,” Thomas says because this is just painful, and he doesn’t need to hear it aloud anyway. “It’s alright.”

“No, it isn’t. And I’m sorry.” Andy looks squarely at him. “You tried to be my friend and I was cruel. I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Thomas says, reaching for the book again for something to occupy his hands with. “That’s all very nice but we’ve got a lesson to be getting on with, don’t we? Let’s stop dallying about.”

Andy smiles faintly. “Should’ve known you’d be a firm taskmaster.”

“Quite right.” Thomas hands him the book, and they start again.

-

But it happens that Thomas is superfluous in helping Andy, just as he is superfluous in the house. The fact is, he hasn’t got a future. Even Molesley knows where he belongs; even Molesley has a place. Thomas feels as though he is slowly drowning and no one notices.

Or perhaps it is that they notice, but they notice the wrong things. They notice him spending time with Andy and assume he is misbehaving, that he is… Well, that he is doing things with Andy not suitable for polite conversation. That he is preying on the lad, because he’s that sort, you know, and so he must be ruining nice innocent young men.

And even Thomas saying he is not isn’t good enough. Nothing Thomas is, or says, or does will ever be good enough, and no amount of cheering up from Master George can fix that.

-

After, mostly Thomas feels stupid, and also glad he botched it. Or, really, glad that Miss Baxter found him, that she cared enough to notice something wasn’t right and to come back. He will never stop being grateful for her kindness, though he knows he hasn’t deserved it.

He knows why he has been so lonely, and he knows why no one fought to keep a place for him. He’s done it to himself. He spreads his own misery and unhappiness until he’s surrounded himself in a cocoon of it. It is a strange thing, when Lady Mary brings Master George to see him, to feel a sudden kinship with her, an understanding. They are both cold and hard, to better hide their hearts. They have fought to protect themselves at the expense of everything else, and everyone else.

He really does hope she finds happiness, and he thinks she means it when she hopes the same for him.

Anna says that perhaps Thomas can use his extra respite at Downton to discover what brought him so low, but he doesn’t need to. He already knows.

He doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t want to say goodbye to the only place he’s been able to call a home since his mother died, but he thinks he’s come as close to terms with it as he can. Maybe it will be good, to have a clean start. Even Mr. Carson has been pleasanter to him since… since it happened, but Thomas knows it’s guilt and pity. In a new place, no one will know how cruel he’s been and no one will know what he did to himself.

A clean start sounds alright.

-

Miss Baxter writes him first, but she is not the only one. Thomas ends up with a stack of letters, from Anna, from Mrs. Patmore, from Daisy, from Mrs. Hughes, even some written by Nanny but clearly influenced by the children and signed _George,_ and _Sybbie,_ and _Marigold,_ in childish hands. There’s a short one from Andy in slightly shaky penmanship. Thomas sits in his new room in his new house and puts his hand to his temple as he breathes.

He fears they are obligation, that they are pity. He’s just the useless under-butler who cut his wrists in the servants’ bath, so they must write to ease their own guilt. Not all of them know, but enough do.

But the letters are pleasant and genuine and Thomas cherishes them. He writes back, afraid it will make them sorry they wrote in the first place and yet needing to out of both politeness and desire, and the people at Downton continue to write him back.

-

He’s pleased when they ask him to Lady Edith’s wedding. It means something to Thomas that they even think of it, that he is welcome, and he can’t pretend he won’t be happy to see everyone again. There isn’t anything wrong with the new place, exactly, but it’s quiet and he does miss the bustle of Downton. The household is so small and the maid doesn’t even live there; though Thomas might be trying to be someone else, there aren’t many for him to try it out on.

He will be so happy to see the children.

He sneaks in to the church and finds a place beside Anna, and it suits him fine not to make a fuss of it. The wedding is nice, as far as weddings go, but it’s after that makes him smile, when Master George comes barreling towards him with a cry of, “Mister Barrow! Mister Barrow!” He ends up with Master George in his arms and Miss Sybbie attached to his leg, while Miss Marigold smiles shyly at him, and for a moment he is truly happy.

Miss Baxter finds him as he’s disentangled himself to let the children go off and she says, “It’s nice to see you happy, Mister Barrow. It suits you.”

“I missed them,” he says, as there’s no point not being honest. He’s missed Downton. When he looks at Miss Baxter, he thinks she knows that.

When he offers to help serve the drinks, he isn’t doing it to ingratiate himself and he isn’t doing it to try to make himself look good. He isn’t trying to get something out of it. So when he does, he is genuinely surprised.

Downton Abbey is going to be his home after all.

-

It’s a bit hard to have a clean start someplace where you’ve already been, but Thomas is trying anyway. The staff all know who he’s been but he made an effort to part on good terms, and he truly wants to do right by them all, to be someone they will respect and enjoy working for. He isn’t Mr. Carson, and there are in fact things he hopes to do better than Mr. Carson, but he’s doing his best.

Miss Baxter says that’s all he can do, so he supposes that must be enough.

The house continues to be filled with children. Miss Marigold goes to live with Lady Edith and Lord Hexham but there are still Master George and Miss Sybbie of course. Johnny Bates spends his days in the nursery and little Miss Caroline is welcomed in the summer. She is a treasure, and Nanny doesn’t mind when Thomas comes to coo at her and let her squeeze his finger with her tiny hands, and sometimes she lets him sit in the nursery and hold her. She’s got a pair of lungs on her for certain and Thomas wonders how like her mother she will turn out to be.

“Will you be the butler forever, Mister Barrow?” Master George asks him, and it makes Thomas want to smile so terribly much.

“If you like, Master George. One day you’ll be in charge, and you can have whatever butler you want.”

“I don’t want any other butler,” Master George says, as though the thought of it is ridiculous, his face scrunching up in confusion.

“Then you’ll just have to ask me to stay.”

“Would you, Mister Barrow?”

“Yes, Master George,” Thomas says, warm all through his insides. “I’d very much like to be your butler here.”

-

Lady Mary’s sudden determination that Thomas is not fit to run the house during the royal visit hits him hard. Though he may have… mellowed, perhaps, Thomas still has his pride, and he doesn’t appreciate being shoved aside for Mr. Carson, not one bit. He takes some small pleasure in stepping down entirely for the duration, though he knows he is risking losing his job completely. He has standards. He won’t relegate himself to the role of assistant help when he should be the butler.

If they did sack him, he supposed he’d have had to count on Master George after all. (He is glad they don’t. It would be a shame to find his principles just in time for them to get him fired.)

He is happy enough, however, to spend a little extra time around Richard Ellis in the meantime, and to smugly observe that Mr. Carson himself is having a rough go of it. He wonders what Lady Mary thinks of her savior being stepped upon by the royal servants.

“It might’ve been a bit better with you, honestly,” Mr. Ellis tells him, as Thomas sits reading the paper while chaos reigns around him. “Mister Wilson really doesn’t like Mister Carson.”

Thomas turns a page of the paper, keeping his smile to himself.

-

Turton’s is like nothing Thomas has ever seen. It isn’t even like America. It’s like… it’s like…

It’s a dream.

-

Though it’s late when he and Richard arrive back at Downton from York, they don’t go to bed. Instead Thomas makes tea and they sit in the kitchen, across from each other at the table.

Richard eyes him from over the top of his cup then nudges Thomas’ foot beneath the table. Thomas jolts and Richard arches an eyebrow; Thomas feels a ridiculous urge to smile.

They hardly even talk but it’s all very companionable. It feels so… Thomas is used to quick fucks hoping he won’t be caught and to touching just a little bit more than necessary during dressing to gauge whether a man will welcome something extra. He isn’t used to this, this feeling of warm regard, the promise that this could be something more, something that is as more as people like him are able to have.

He finds that he quite likes it.

-

The Duke of Crowborough was not the only one who learned. Thomas is hesitant when he writes Richard Ellis, afraid to say too much, to seem overly familiar. Richard is similarly circumspect in his replies, but Thomas hopes he is not being silly when he reads between the lines, when he hears what Richard can’t quite say. He hopes that Richard reads between the lines of Thomas’ letters because Thomas certainly means for him to, silly or not.

Richard signs them, _ever your dear friend,_ or _your truest friend,_ or _yours most sincerely,_ and Thomas feels warm as he runs his eyes over the words over and over, clutching Richard’s key ring, his token.

-

They write each other for months. Thomas thinks it’s a kind of happiness, to be settled in the house, to have earned what he hopes is at least a measure of genuine respect from the staff, to be valued by the family. He knows he does his job well. The children still smile at him and laugh, even if they’re mostly getting too big to be bounced on his knee.

But most of all, Richard’s letters make him happy. They write of Downton and the palace, of their small trials and small triumphs. Richard tells him about his nieces and nephews and in return Thomas writes about Master George and Miss Sybbie and Miss Caroline. London seems an awfully long way away and Thomas sometimes longs for a different life, a life where he could have something more than letters, but it has taken him so long to get even this far that it seems ridiculous to wish for more.

And then Richard writes, _I have a couple days’ leave, will you come to London, will you meet me? Can you manage it?_

Thomas finds he can. He smiles when he writes, _yes._

-

Richard meets him at King’s Cross. He tips his hat and smiles, says, “Mister Barrow,” in that voice Thomas has dreamed of.

Thomas says, “Mister Ellis,” and nothing has ever felt more right.

**_End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> So, I watched the movie again and started having a resurgence of feelings about Thomas and Thomas/Ellis and what have you. I watched some videos on YouTube and realized there were entire plots I had completely forgotten about, and then I went, you know, might as well do a rewatch of the whole show! So I did, and as I did I started to write this fic. Originally the idea was to be a short thing centered on him writing letters to O'Brien in the war, and then it quickly morphed past that to a kind of chronicle about key moments depicted through the letters he wrote and received, mostly because I wanted to include Richard. And then it grew, and it lost the thread of letter-writing, and turned into this, whatever it is! I also seem to have absorbed some fanon from fic which I realized as I watched the show wasn't strictly accurate if we're going off canon alone (things like Thomas hearing about Baxter from his sister) but I decided not to change them. I sincerely apologize if this offends anyone!


End file.
